


In This Nineteenth Year

by bynnsie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3594996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bynnsie/pseuds/bynnsie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That year, without really knowing why, Armin made it his mission to find every person he once knew.<br/>Because that year, he found Jean.</p><p>Armin-centric reincarnation AU -- Armin remembers, and spends his nineteenth year searching for anyone else who can remember as well.  Eventual Jearmin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Years 7-19

_Age 7._

That year, Armin began to remember.

It was February when woke from a terrible nightmare sobbing, gasping and clawing for air as if drowning.  His mother had rushed in to scold his older brother for letting Armin watch one too many scary movies.

But the dream wasn’t like any scary movie that Armin had ever seen.  He did not know it yet, but there was nothing in the world like it.  If this was some feat of his precocious imagination, he might even be proud that he could conjure up a world so strange and foreign as a one in which humanity lived trapped within three concentric, circular walls.

In the second grade he began to draw the walls.  He got in trouble a few times when a teacher mistook his drawing for a naked breast (years later would he remember this in mortification), but it was only when he began to draw four outcroppings along the edge—he did not know the word, but he carefully spelled out “Shiganshina" below—that anyone ever looked carefully.

A supply teacher pulled him aside one day during lunch.  In his hand was one of the many drawings Armin had produced over the last few months.

“Armin,” he said slowly, “What is this?”

“The walls, sir,” Armin replied.

Armin heard his teacher mutter “oh dear Lord” under his breath and run his hands through his hair.  As he pushed his fringe back, Armin thought that maybe, he might look familiar.

“Armin, how much do you remember?” his teacher whispered, his usually levity absent.  It made Armin incredibly uncomfortable.  “Do you remember a long time ago when you knew me?  Do you remember a time when your last name was Arlert?”

“Arlert?” Armin repeated, and suddenly it felt as if this was the last turn of a key.  Clarity, or as much clarity as a seven year old could possess, flooded over him.  He looked up at the man standing before him, imagining him ten years younger, with his messy hair shorn short.

“Connie?”

The name rose unbidden on Armin’s lips, but the effect on Connie was instantaneous.  He repeated another “oh dear Lord” and sank down until he was rocking on his heels.  His hands knotted in his hair and Armin took a step back, a little frightened.

“Oh sweet Jesus, Armin, it’s actually you,” Connie breathed.

“I don’t understand,” Armin said, bewildered that the bouncing boy in his dreams had suddenly materialized himself before him in the real, waking world.  Armin froze—because if Connie was real in both worlds, then _anything_ could be real in both worlds, which meant—

_Eren.  Mikasa._

_Titans._

Armin began to cry.

“Oh, Armin, I’m sorry!” Connie apologized frantically, throwing his arms around Armin and patting his back.  “Oh, God, I’m so dumb—that’s too scary for you to remember, I’m so sorry.”

But Armin was utterly terrified.  It was a fear so enormous that he could not articulate it—he was only seven, he was not prepared to remember the turmoil and horror of so many more years.  How had he borne it then?  Hadn’t he been young then, too?  All at once Armin remembered himself older, assaulted, forced to murder, watching his friends torn apart and _eaten_ —the slick feel of blood between his fingers, his own blood and of others—he could barely bear them as night terrors, but God, to remember with such clarity in the _daytime_ —

Armin clung to Connie and only sobbed harder and harder.

(He had a fever for the rest of the night.  He fought against the edge of sleep and lost—again he was plunged into the world of his memories, but this time he relived a simple and happy memory of himself and Connie and Sasha.  When Armin returned to school two days later, Connie would not respond to his old name no matter how many times Armin called.)

* * *

 

_Age 9._

That year, Armin began his journal.

He learned that his family in this world was nothing at all like the one he once had.  Most importantly, he was not an orphan: he had a mother and father, a brother, a pair of grandparents in each hand.  He was loved and coddled and kissed daily.  They gave him the security that if he shouted, someone would come.

He was absolutely terrified that he would lose them all.

But no--this was not that sort of cruel world.  Life had remembered the painful hand it once dealt him, and paid him back in full.

So why the nightmares?

At the very least, he was getting better at dreaming.  He no longer screamed when he woke, and he rarely cried anymore.  He was still horrified and sick with fear, but he didn't let anyone see it.  Instead, on the nights of the dreams, he flicked on his bedside lamp with a shaky hand and wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

Armin's journal became something of an icebreaker at his parents' tea parties.  It was a plain notebook bound in good brown leather, a thoughtless gift to a boy who poured everything of himself inside it and transformed it into something precious.  Armin filled it with the world of his dreams, and the macabre contents worried and impressed any adult who laid hands on it.

"You're so precocious, Armin," they would coo, pink lemonade in one hand, journal in the other.  "A real Tolkien--positively Kubrick-ian."

The journal drew interest for a few months, but Armin knew it was best to hide it once his parents tired of the novelty.

"It's--disturbing, frankly," he overheard his mother say one night.  "It's nightmarish for a boy his age to be imagining such things."

Armin's father sipped his brandy.  "He doesn't know better.  Smart boys rarely do."

"I just don't--what in the world has he seen that makes him think these things up?"

"He's just too bright for his age," his father repeated, voice marked by both pride and uncertainty.  "He'll be fine once school begins to challenge him properly."

Armin wondered if that was true.  He occupied himself in his schoolwork just as his parents had hoped, and found that the dreams did not stop in the slightest.

* * *

_Age 14._

That year, Armin found two more.

“Oh good heavens,” Mina gasped, wrapping her tattooed arms around Armin.  “Oh, Armin, _Armin_.”

“What are you doing?” the hairdresser next to Mina demanded.  She tugged Mina off Armin, who was tangled in a smock covered in his own hair clippings.

“It’s just—oh, I _can’t_ \--,” Mina tried to explain, but Armin knew very well that how hard it was to compose yourself once you found someone.  After seven years, he was getting better at it: recognizing people, bumping into them and feigning familiarity, and brushing it off as a mistake if they didn’t remember him.  Mina had cracked the moment he said her old name.

“Here, Armin, just let me finish your trim and we’ll—we’ll—we’ll go out for tea, okay?”

“Don’t you have other appointments?” Armin asked.

“ _To hell with the other appointments_ ,” Mina hissed, and Armin laughed as Mina attacked his hair with vigor.

Armin lost count of how many cups of tea he and Mina ordered that afternoon.

“I’ve met Bert, you know,” Mina said as she flipped through his journal.  Armin looked up, chilled.  Mina was long dead before anyone knew about Bertholdt, or Reiner, or Annie—or Eren.  A stab of longing flashed through Armin’s chest.  “He’s a librarian now.  Putting his height to good use in all those bookshelves—he’s tall again, you see.”

Armin swallowed back his trepidation.  Should he tell Mina?

“He told me that he barely remembers anything, the poor man,” Mina continued.  She smiled sadly at Armin’s journal—validating, solid, there.  “He won’t let himself, and I wouldn’t want him to.  It’s difficult, living through all of that and trying to bear that kind of guilt.”

 _Oh,_ Armin thought, reading all at once the expression in Mina’s face.   _Oh._

She knew.

Perhaps she didn’t know everything, but Mina _knew_.

“It’s not fair that some of us remember all the terrible things we’ve done.  In a world like that, people were forced to do inexcusable things.  Horrific, horrendous, unforgivable things.”  Mina turned her eyes up, still bright and hopeful.  “But that was in another lifetime.  We can’t hold ourselves accountable for things that happened before we were even born.”

“But that was still us,” Armin replied.

Mina shook her head.  “It wasn’t.”

“It must be, if we can recall it,” Armin insisted, because he remembered he did those things—some brave and brilliant, others horrific and shameful—and knew all too well the feeling of a blade ripping flesh.  “Mina, that was _us_.”

“You can’t hold yourself accountable for the things that happened so long ago,” Mina said kindly.  Her hands were trembling a bit.  “That’s too cruel and unfair—when we’re reborn, we don’t have to pay for the crimes from our past lives.  You’d drown in that guilt.  It would take lifetimes to make those amends.”

Armin looked down at her unblemished hand resting on his journal.

 _I am not Armin Arlert_ , he thought to himself, but it somehow felt like a lie.  He wondered how Mina felt when she said it to herself.

“Please come see me again,” Mina said as Armin stood to leave.  “To talk like this, and see it all laid out by someone else—God, it makes me feel less crazy.”

She held out her hand, which Armin took gladly.

With a twinge of despair, he realized that she had asked how long the rest of their training squad had lasted after her.

* * *

_Age 19._

That year, without really knowing why, Armin made it his mission to find every person he once knew.

Because that year, he found Jean.


	2. March, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin finally (almost) finds Jean, and (almost) kills him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Just as a heads up, there is a lot of swearing in this chapter--this fic is rated T mostly for Jean's copious cussing. Can you guess my favorite swearing combination?)
> 
> This chapter is a bit short but at least Jean is finally here?

Armin very nearly murdered him.  It was midterms week, and he had calmly resolved to kill the person who had knocked his coffee onto his laptop.  It was a rational, deliberate decision—Armin watched his laptop screen glitch to black.

“Holy motherfucking _shit_ ,” the voice above said.  “Jesus _fuck_ , I am _so fucking sorry_.”

The voice was so full of self-loathing that Armin almost forgave him.  Armin looked up to find the one person in New York possibly more exhausted than him--and Armin had only slept for five hours in the last three days.

The offender was tall, lanky, with an undercut ( _Do all American college students in New York have undercuts?_ , Armin wondered idly) and a mop of unconvincingly bleached hair.  He was still letting out a quiet string of curses.  Knit beanie, flannel, a pair of battered Doc Martens--an over-caffeinated college hipster, Armin recognized.  He was likely in the same midterms week fog as Armin.

“Buy me another and I’ll forgive you,” Armin sighed, mopping up his laptop with a fistful of napkins.  He looked up and found the stranger smiling at him crookedly.

“Fancy accent you’ve got there, Sherlock,” the student said the thickest Brooklyn accent Armin had ever heard.  He turned toward the counter before Armin could retort.

As Armin watched the stranger walk away he felt a flutter of familiarity in the back of his mind.  Recently these moments of recognition tended to pass without incident.  He had only been recognized three times in a dozen years--he really only ever spoke to one--and Armin no longer held much hope for reciprocation.

He had his journal and Mina, and that was enough.

The stranger returned with an enormous paper cup in tow.  “I didn’t know how you take your coffee,” he said as he gingerly placed it a good distance from Armin’s laptop, “But you look like the kind of guy that drinks it tar black.”

Armin tore open a sugar packet.  “Sorry, I’m not that impressive.”

“But seriously, though,” the stranger continued as Armin poured in his sugar, “I feel shitty about your laptop.  I promise I’ll pay you back somehow.  It might take me a while to scrape up the money, but I’ll do it.”  He pulled off his beanie and ran his fingers through his hair, groaning.  “God, what a shitbag I am to do this during _midterms_.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m fabulously wealthy,” Armin replied in his most affected, posh accent.  “We’re landed aristocracy back in Mother England, you know.”

“Tea with the Queen and all that?” the stranger asked, same lopsided grin on his face.

“Only on Sundays,” Armin replied as he drank his coffee.

The stranger let out a loud, barking laugh that made a few customers turn their heads, though he showed no self-consciousness about it. “Well excuse me, milord!”

Armin matched the stranger’s smile, then caught himself--Armin had never been the sort of person to let himself joke around with strangers.  There was something disarmingly familiar about the boy, Armin considered for a moment, but dismissed the thought immediately.  It was merely exhaustion that had weakened his defenses.

 _Don’t get too invested,_ Armin reminded himself.   _He won’t recognize you.  They never do._

The stranger was tying knots in a straw wrapper, peering into Armin's face with interest.  Armin tried to keep his expression neutral--but why was he looking so intently?

“I don’t think I would’ve forgotten an English lord such as yourself," the stranger finally said with a friendly tilt of his head, "but, have we met before?”

Armin flinched a little too hard, the haze of exhaustion clearing immediately.  He took in the stranger more carefully now, past the clothing and hair dye.  Armin sensed a familiarity devoid of recognition in the long, sloping lines of the stranger's face.  Its resemblance to Connie's expression from twelve years ago pained him.

“No,” Armin said.  “No, I don’t think so.”

“But you seem so familiar,” the stranger insisted, tone light.  He couldn’t have known what his words were doing to Armin’s heart rate.  “Are you sure?  Because I could’ve sworn that you--”

“We haven’t met before,” Armin said immediately, cutting him off more sharply than he had intended.  Guilt crept over him at the chastened expression on the stranger’s face, but he forced it down.

 _It’s better this way,_ Armin told himself even as his heart sank.

“Honestly, please don’t concern yourself about my laptop.”  Armin quickly gathered his notebooks and dripping laptop into his backpack and stood.  “My parents really are too wealthy for their own good.  Keep your money for yourself--you probably need it more.”

The stranger stiffened.  “Are you calling me poor?”

 _Oh hell_ , Armin thought, _I have not slept enough to be having a row with a stranger._  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“God, what the fuck is wrong with you?” the stranger demanded, standing.  He shoved his beanie over his head.  “I’m gonna pay you back because this was my fault and it’s the right thing to do.  Don’t fucking pity me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Armin repeated, but the stranger was already angrily writing a note on the back of a napkin.  He thrust it at Armin, an arm’s length away.

“Call me with the price of your new laptop," the stranger said testily.  "If you don't, remember that New York City's not so big that I won't be able to hunt you down."

Armin had no intention of calling him but he took the napkin anyway, if only to placate him.  Tucking it into his pocket, Armin thanked the stranger for the coffee and left as quickly as he could. 

* * *

 

Two hours later, Armin was in the middle of ransacking his dorm room.

"Where did the bloody thing go?" he muttered to himself, rummaging through his cluttered desk for the hundredth time.  "It's not as if it has _legs_."

Armin had not let his journal out of arm's reach since his brother knocked it into their fish tank five years ago.  The journal had grown worn as Armin filled it with maps and timelines that wandered through impossible years, but somehow its ugliness made it all the more painful to lose.  It was difficult not to treasure something he had kept for more than half his life.

He knew that he left the room with it that afternoon.  He remembered its weight in his backpack--but now that he thought of it, hadn't his backpack felt a bit too light when he'd left the café?

Armin called the shop but got the after-hours voicemail.  He smashed the "end call" button in frustration.

"What now?" he asked himself helplessly.  He collapsed onto his bed, buried in week-old laundry, and found that the jeans he had worn earlier lay by his head.  The corner of a napkin peeked out from the back pocket.

What would be worse, Armin considered: calling the stranger and finding that he didn't have his journal, or calling the stranger and finding that he did?  Both options filled him with dread and embarassment.

 _Don't overthink_ , Armin told himself as he sat up and snatched the napkin.  He flattened it on his knee, and nearly ripped it it half when he read the contents.

A phone number and an unfamiliar name.  But above it, written in an angry slant with an angrier slash running through it, was a horrendously familiar name.

 _Jean_. 

* * *

 

Jean had always had a fondness for frayed, useful, and well-loved things.

Being the fourth of six children, Jean could not deny that most of his belongings were already worn out by the time he inherited them.  Even so, he horded his jeans and sweaters long past when anyone sensible would have thrown them out--there was a sort of history in them that he was more than proud to wear.

This was why he could not help but love the journal.

He had a hard time believing that it belonged to the boy in the coffee shop.  Why would someone who wore a goddamn Rolex to study have such a cheap and tattered journal?  This was the journal of a man obsessed, or of a hungry traveler; this did not belong in the hands of that pre-med _prick_.  It deserved better.

Jean's fingers itched to open it.

"Stop that, it's not yours," he said aloud as he found his fingers slipping between the pages.  He felt the indentation of ballpoint pen, the dog-eared sticky notes, the water-warped pages--it was taking all he had not to tear the thing open and devour it whole.  The only thing keeping him from doing so was a fierce respect for privacy that he had developed from living in a home of nine.  He mustered all of his willpower and swore that he would only open the front cover to find a name.

His fingers brushed the well-handled cover.  Electricity ran up his spine.  Jean drew his hand away, fascinated by the sensation that washed over him.   _Familiarity_ , he thought, without knowing why.  Faintly, something beneath his collarbone ached.   _Longing_.

His cell phone rang.

"Jesus _fuck_ \--!" he half yelled, scrambling to silence his phone before he suitemates woke.  He was breathless when he answered the unknown number.

"What's your name?" the voice on the other end asked without ceremony.

Jean paused.  It was the boy from the coffee shop, Jean recognized, but somehow--not.  Jean told him the name that his parents had given him, the one he had given to the boy on the brown paper napkin.  The voice on the other end was silent.

Jean desperately wanted to ask why he had called, wanted to tell him he had his gorgeous journal in his hands, wanted to beg for his permission to open it.  Instead he smashed his wandering hand between his knees.

"Have you looked inside it?"

"Of course not," Jean replied immediately, guiltily.

"So you have it, then?  My journal?"

Jean swore away from the mouthpiece before replying, "Yeah, but I didn't have your num--"

"Oh thank goodness."  The boy on the other end almost sounded like he might be crying with relief.  "Oh, thank _God_."

Jean was unsure of what to say.  He glanced back at the enticing journal before him.  The voice on the other end said his name, drawing him back to the conversation at hand.  Jean felt the pain in his chest flare--that was not the name he wanted to hear, somehow.

"Yeah?"

"I'm--sorry about this afternoon," he said haltingly.

"No," Jean replied, surprised at the sudden apology.  Most of his irritation had cooled down as soon as the boy had left the shop.  "It was my fault, for fucking up your laptop.  There was no reason for me to be the angry one."

There was rustling at the other end of the line.  "No, I get--snappish.  About certain things. I was thoughtless.  It wasn't your fault."

Jean tried to remember what he said when things had gone sour.  "All I said was that I thought you looked--"

" _Who's Jean?_ "

Jean started, causing a few pens to clatter onto the linoleum floor.  "What?"

"On the napkin, you wrote 'Jean.'"  The voice edged on wariness.  "That's--you, isn't it?"

The ache was like heartburn now, the worst, most vivid longing Jean had felt in years.  Had he written that name?  He couldn't remember.  He had been so irritated, maybe he’d written that name he sometimes heard in his dreams by accident?  His desire to read the journal grew too big, too intense, and suddenly he craved to know its owner more than its contents.

He knew he would sound so stupid, especially to the intelligent boy he had met in the coffee shop, and _yet_ \--

"Who are you?" Jean asked, doing his utmost to keep his voice from wavering and failing.  "What's your name?"

The voice on the other end spoke, and Jean felt the thin line between dream and reality crumble.

"Jean," he said, "it's Armin."


	3. Chapter 2: March, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin and Jean plan a meeting in Central Park and lots of things go very, very wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much like Armin and Jean, my college life has gotten the best of me--I had a good 80% of this chapter finished for two weeks but haven't been able to work on it lately. Thank you for being patient! And thank you for reading!!
> 
> Edit: Whoa there are so many typos and grammatical errors (that's what I get for posting so late at night/early in the morning)... I fixed a few, but sorry if you find more.....

"Tell me where you are," Jean shouted with the kind of urgency usually reserved for fires and car accidents.  "I swear to God, Armin, tell me and I'll go there right now."

Armin pressed a hand to his mouth.  He thought he might be sick.  He could hear banging on Jean's end of the line and a voice screaming "It's fucking quiet hours, asshole!", but Armin himself couldn't make a sound.

Jean.  It was _Jean_.

Armin had had so many dreams and nightmares where Jean was by his side, so many memories to corroborate that no one else could--Armin fell onto his bed.

"Armin, are you there?" Jean demanded.  His voice quieted a bit.  "Armin?"

Armin closed his eyes.  This was not the way his parents said his name, not the way his classmates did, or his professors.  This was the way Connie had said it twelve years ago, and it made Armin's throat tighten.

"It’s alright if you read my journal,” Armin managed to say.

"Right now?"  The practical, sensible tone that Armin knew lay beneath Jean's initial ferocity began to surface.  "I might flunk all my exams for the rest of the week if I do."

"I think I already will."

"Shut up, you're a fucking prodigy."

Armin chuckled, opening his eyes to peer at his clock.  It was nearing one o’clock; he loathed his 8 A.M. o-chem midterm with a newfound passion.  How was he supposed to sleep knowing that there was someone like him in the same city, maybe even the same neighborhood?  God, he had found Jean five minutes from his apartment!  It had been years since he had wanted to talk to anyone for more than a few minutes, and now he didn’t even have that.

“When are you free?” Jean asked, as if reading Armin’s mind.  “I already trashed your laptop and stole your journal.  I don’t want to screw up your midterms week any worse--when’s your last test?”

“I have a paper due Friday morning,” Armin replied, “but I can skip the rest of my classes.”

Jean whistled.  “What a fucking rebel you are.”

“And you?”

“I think I can do Friday.”  Armin could hear Jean fumble with something--a planner?  his journal?--and finally settle on a squeaky bed.  “Thanks for the motivation not to procrastinate.”

The two days until Friday felt unreasonably distant.  But Armin was a master of patience by now; he had years of practice, after all.  To stave off his impatience for two days would be painful but not impossible.

If it was for the sake of seeing someone like Jean, Armin was willing to wait for years.

“Before you disappear again,” Jean added, perhaps only a few miles away, “Give me your goddamn phone number.”

* * *

Jean made it all the way to Thursday afternoon before he opened the journal.

He sat in his smock with clay dust up to his elbows, idly spinning his wheel, before he sighed a quick “fuck it” and retrieved the journal from his backpack.  He knew that once he started to read he would be useless for at least an hour, but he reasoned that his distracted mind was already ruining the clay.

The journal, so well-used, opened immediately to where the spine was most creased.

Jean found a simplified map of the world in his dreams.  Just three circles--in careful ballpoint, with a few outcroppings on each side.  He ran his fingers over the map, studying where Armin had carefully placed cities and villages.

 _Stohess,_ Armin had written in clumsy, childish handwriting.   _Destroyed by Annie as a titan.  Titan in the wall._

Near Wall Rose, Armin had spelled out _Castle Utgardt_.  The handwriting was neater, of an older Armin; Jean realized that Armin had constantly updated the map as he remembered.  It was no wonder that the spine was so creased at this page.   _ ~~Krista~~  Historia, Ymir, Connie, Reiner, and Bertholdt; four others (names?).  Titans killed officers, destroyed castle.  Ymir found to be a shifter._

There were dozens of locations marked by x’s, each with their own notes.  Sometimes the captions ran long and directed him to a later page where Armin continued the description, often in several different handwritings.  There were sketches of buildings, of 3D maneuver gear and cannons; in especially familiar locations, Armin even drew out the blueprints of entire towns.

But the pages that pained Jean the most were the dreams entries.

They started with such young handwriting.  Armin did not date his entries until a few years after he began the journal, but Jean could imagine that Armin had been about eight or nine when he began.

In those early pages, the word Jean kept finding was “scared.”

Jean had first dreamt of that world he was fourteen, and he had run to the bathroom to vomit out of fear the moment he woke up.  He had not dreamed much since, but imagining a grade schooler forced to bear that sort of terror alone for years made Jean’s stomach clench.

Armin had always been brave, but Jean would never wish such memories on someone so _young_.

“Your clay’s cracking,” a classmate said, rousing Jean from his thoughts.  He looked up; the light from the windows had shifted dramatically since he had first opened the journal.

“What time is it?"

The student glanced at the clock.  “Six thirty-ish.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jean swore as he smashed his dried vase into a ball, tossing it in the sink for slip.  Jean counted the hours on his fingers: he’d have to come in early on Friday to start the kilns and fire his vases, then glaze them between classes, and come back in the afternoon to fire them again--

If he hurried, he might still make it to see Armin.

 _Not a chance,_ his logic said, but Jean swatted reason away.  He walked to the clay supply and cut off a block with a little more force than necessary.  This was going to be a week of miracles, even if he had to force it to be so.

 ***

Armin glanced at his wristwatch.

That morning he had shamefully changed the punctuation on his assignment to size 14 in order to reach the minimum page count, and now his conscience was catching up with him.  To be fair, it had been Jean who insisted that they meet in Central Park, which was twice as far from NYU than it was from Columbia.  Armin had reasoned that if Jean was sure that he could arrive in time, he should return the courtesy.

As it stood, Jean was nearly two hours late.

 _I’ve been stood up,_ Armin considered, watching children and tourists mill about the green.  Jean’s suggestion of meeting in Central Park had felt vaguely embarrassing, like a cliched plot device in a rom-com, and Armin had spent the better part of two days imagining how he would act when he met Jean there.  A reunion in picturesque Central Park--Armin was mortified to have invested so much time perfecting the daydream, especially since it was not playing out at all.  It was not that Armin was unhappy to be alone (he’d found as he grew older that he almost preferred it) but the pitying glances from passerbys really did make Armin wonder just what he had expected.

 _I told you it was best not to get involved,_ Armin scolded himself.   _These things never work out._

And how could Armin blame Jean?  Connie had been so horrified that he never acknowledged Armin again; Bert refused to remember anything at all; Mina only discussed good memories, never titans or death.  Only Armin, who had had an ugly, twisted mind from the start, would want to remember on purpose.  Jean must have had unbearable memories too.  Armin couldn’t ask the him to dredge up such an awful past  just for his sake.

Armin looked at his watch again, hoping he had maybe been misreading the hour hand all afternoon, or that he had forgotten some obscure American daylight savings oddity.  But no, it was definitely four forty-five: in a day he would be heading back to London for spring recess, and he wouldn’t have another chance to meet Jean for another week.

A passing vendor offered Armin a balloon-animal poodle.

“Nah, man,” he said as Armin reached for his wallet.  “It’s on the house.  Special deal for lost kids and stood-up dates.”

“You’re almost right, which one do I look like?” Armin asked.

The vendor laughed.  "You get used to recognizing the type. If you’re going to stay out longer, watch out for the rain.”

Armin looked up past the trees.

It _was_ getting rather stormy.

 ***

Jean had asked a week of miracles and instead received a Friday of _absolute chaos_.

When he had returned to the studio on Friday morning, two of his five vases were slouching and the kiln would not turn on.  He had rushed to reproduce the unsalvageable vases, only to be lectured by a professor for a half hour about procrastination.

That afternoon, as he dumped glaze onto his vases, a wandering freshman knocked his cell phone into a vat of slip.  Swearing at him had only resulted in tears, and Jean spent the better half of an hour apologizing and assuring the freshman that he wasn’t actually _angry_ , he only swore to hide his own insecurities, you know?

The worst of it was that his phone was ruined--and that phone was the only thing Jean owned that had Armin’s phone number.

By the time Jean had finished glazing, kicked the untrustworthy kiln, and cooled his red-hot vases, it was already past five o’clock.

“Son of a _bitch,_ ” Jean swore as he sprinted out of the studio, searching desperately for a goddamn _telephone._ It was raining--of course it was _fucking raining_ \--and at an ominous rumble of thunder, Jean was forced to limit his search to the fine arts building.  Would Armin have waited for two hours?  Jean desperately tried his slip encrusted phone to no avail.  He pounced on the first familiar classmate he saw.

“A freshman fucked up my phone and now I need yours,” Jean said as he tore the iPhone out of her hands.  The girl, a junior Jean vaguely remembered as maybe an Emily, arched an eyebrow and snatched her phone back.

“How about a ‘please’?”

“ _Fucking please,_ ” Jean nearly shouted.  It was almost six o’clock on the Friday before spring break and the department was desolate.  Jean didn’t know when he’d see another person again.

Maybe-Emily seemed to sense Jean’s urgency and handed him the phone.  “Got a date?”

“I’m two hours late,” Jean said tersely, tapping in his roommate's phone number.

_The number you have dialed is currently unavaila--_

“ _Jesus Mary fucking shit_ ,” Jean groaned in despair.

“It’s the storm,” Maybe-Emily said wisely.  “The reception in the ceramics studio is shit to begin with.”

Jean glanced out the lightning storm and decided that, by the way today was going, he may as well brave death by electrocution.  He was dripping by the time he reached the subway, and using his very best language, managed to shove his way through the Friday evening crowd onto a late car.

 ***

The prophetic balloon vendor had been right: ten minutes to six, it began to pour.

Rain was not a problem.  Growing up in London, Armin had seen more rain than sun for most of his lifetime and habitually stashed an umbrella somewhere on his person.  Even so, rain meant that benches became useless except to wet his jeans.  If he was going to be a pathetic sod and wait alone in the rain in Central Park, he would have to do it standing up or walking.

 _Where to?_ , Armin wondered as he watched the last few park-goers escape the downpour.  There were a few places in Central Park he was interested in visiting, but markedly fewer that he would like to see in the rain.  Maybe he would visit the ducks in the pond.  He had always wondered what they did when it rained.

 ***

Jean nearly exploded when he arrived at the appointed spot, three hours late and absolutely drenched, and found no one there.  Of course Armin would be long gone.  Of course the park would be absolutely empty.  Who would wait for someone they barely knew, for hours without notice, especially in the rain?

Well, he had hoped Armin would.

Jean felt the bitter sting of disappointment at the thought. _Armin_.  He wondered if that was still his name now, or if his parents had given him a different one like his own parents had.  What  was he doing in America?  Was he there to search for them?  Who else had he met?  Just how much did he remember, and did he know why they had these dreams at all?  

"Damn it," Jean hissed, bunching his dripping hair in a fist.  He had millions of questions he was on the verge of having answered, and he had screwed it all up.  There was no one better than Armin to answer questions, and now he had lost him.

Of course he had.  Wasn't that how it always was, even back then?

Jean unzipped his parka and reached inside to feel for Armin’s journal.  He had wrapped it in a spare t-shirt, and now it seemed to be the only dry item Jean had.  He shivered, and turned heel toward the subway station he had just left.

He'd have to give up for now.  Jean knew that there was no reasonable chance that he’d run into Armin before he left for England, but it didn't make him feel any better.  All he could think was that the world in his dreams became utterly meaningless without Armin, and soon Armin would be an ocean away.

Jean walked with his head down, trying to keep the rain from landing in his eyes and washing out his contacts.  His jeans felt too heavy, and his shoes were sloshing with water.  His socks were probably done for.

"Jean?" a voice called through the patter of rain.

Jean froze, then looked over his shoulder.  He rubbed a fist over his eyes, fucking up one of his contacts as he had feared.  There was someone blurry approaching him, someone with an umbrella and a blue--balloon animal?, Jean wondered, squinting.  He took a few steps forward, hesitant.

"You look like you were in the pond with the ducks," the blurry person said, and now Jean was almost prepared to dive into the puddle for his lost contact just so he could properly see that face.

"I'm so goddamn sorry, Armin," Jean apologized, ducking under Armin's outstretched umbrella and doing his best not to drip onto him.  "The day--really got away from me.”

Armin laughed with far more generosity than Jean would have allowed if he had been the one waiting for three hours.  "I can tell."

Jean dug in his jacket for the journal, and passed it to Armin.  The relief Jean had heard on the phone was nothing compared to seeing Armin's expression firsthand as he unwrapped his journal, and Jean felt obliged to look a bit away.  He quietly congratulated himself for taking such good care of it.

After a few moments, Jean managed a sidelong glance at Armin.  He wasn't exactly the same boy as in his memories, but still recognizable, somehow: still on the small side, still blonde, still button-nosed.  A good childhood had relieved the more worrisome extremes of his scrawniness, but Armin's eyes were still just as attentive and intelligent as Jean remembered.  That was nice.  To see Armin in this peaceful world where he could put his big brain to happier uses--Jean was glad.

"Why are you smiling?" Armin asked.

Jean shook his head and tried to force the smile away.  "I can't believe you waited three hours."

"I do think that you are a terrible person for making me wait outside during a lightning storm, but I was given this balloon for free," Armin replied, holding out his balloon poodle.  "I suppose that makes up for some of it."

“I am just falling further and further into debt, aren’t I?” Jean asked as he took the poodle.

Armin let out a huff of laughter.  “You got my journal back for me.  I think that makes up for an awful lot.”

* * *

As he unloaded Jean’s clothes from the dryer, Armin wondered what he would be doing in Jean’s situation.  He imagined that he would be mortified to be shivering wet and almost naked in the bathroom of a boy he had met only two days before.  Jean, however, seemed perfectly comfortable prancing about Armin’s apartment in nothing but borrowed sweatpants, drying his underwear with Armin’s feeble hairdryer.  Was it that Jean made himself at home that easily, or did he truly believe that they had known each other in another lifetime?

 _Perhaps both,_ Armin decided as he returned to his apartment to find Jean boldly digging through his closet for something that would fit him.  Jean held up one of Armin’s shirts and snorted, “Dude, you’re _tiny._ ”

“Height has always difficult for me,” Armin replied as he threw Jean’s dried clothes at him.  Jean dug out the t-shirt that had protected the journal and pulled it on as he followed Armin into the living room where they had left the journal.  Jean, ever-comfortable, collapsed stomach-first onto Armin’s sofa to read it.

“I actually barely got to read this,” Jean admitted as he flipped through the pages.  “Midterms.”

“Is that why you were late?” Armin asked from the kitchen.

As Jean relayed the tragedy of his Friday, Armin did his best not to laugh.  Jean occupied himself with Armin's journal, and Armin, embarrassed to watch Jean pore over it in front of him, hid himself in the next room under the pretense of preparing dinner.

After a few quiet minutes, Armin looked up to find Jean standing in the doorway separating the kitchen from the living area, his finger tucked into a few pages of the journal.  Jean remarked, “There are a few things I think I can add.”

Armin wiped his hands with a tea towel and handed Jean a pen, then retracted the offer when Jean’s eyes widened in surprise.  "What is it?"

“You’re letting me write in it?  Isn't it--yours?”

It was Armin’s turn to be taken aback.  “Well, I mean, I’ve let Mina write in it before.”

“Mina?” Jean repeated before his face lit up in recognition.  “Mina Carolina?”

“From our trainee days,” Armin said as he flipped to a page filled with Mina’s neat, even handwriting.  “She’s a hairdresser in Bristol.  I phone her all the time.”

“And she remembers too?” Jean asked, his eyes flying over Mina’s descriptions of 3-D maneuver gear, sketches of uniforms, anecdotes of training.  

“More or less everything she lived through, I think.  Haven’t you met anyone?”

Jean let out an incredulous breath, tearing his eyes away from Mina’s writing with visible effort.  “I didn't know what to believe, so I haven’t told anyone about this.  No, I haven’t met a single person before you.  Just how many of us have you met, Armin?”

Armin swallowed hard.  After Connie it had been his hope to find someone who wanted to talk about their past life together--Mina was wonderful, but she had died before many of Armin's more unclear memories--and Armin found that now that he was faced with Jean, he was paralyzed with worry.  Armin did not know what he would do if Jean reacted in the same way as Connie had.

"I recognize someone from time to time--so far, perhaps a dozen or so," Armin replied carefully.  "Only a few can remember anything, much less recognize me in return."

"Who other than Mina?"

Armin turned his eyes down.  "Connie."

"Connie Springer?" Jean demanded, smiling wide as he remembered the small and hilarious boy they had spent so many years with.  "That's incredible, Armin!  Where is he?  How's he doing?"

Armin watched Jean's smile falter when he saw Armin's expression.

"What happened?" Jean asked.

Armin explained how Connie had found him and then left.  Jean was silent the entire time; Armin half-wished that Jean would laugh or sigh or make any sound at all, just so that Armin could ignore the wavering in his own voice.

“I haven’t contacted him since,” Armin concluded, a halfhearted smile on his face.

Jean was no longer smiling.  His expression made Armin desperately uncomfortable.

“He probably didn't want to scare you,” Jean finally said, breaking the silence.  “I mean, you were only seven, and he was your teacher.”

Armin shook his head.  “It was more than that.  I felt it with Mina too--when you’re around people who remember, you can’t help but remember more and more.  Being around someone like me probably brought up memories he’d rather not have.  It’s understandable that he wouldn't want to see me again.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Jean replied almost instantly.  “The Connie that I remember wouldn't do something shitty like that.  Come on, let’s call him right now.”

“It’s nearly midnight there,” Armin laughed.

“Then we’ll call tomorrow morning.”

“I haven’t seen him for over ten years, I don’t know his phone number.”  Armin shook his head, chuckling.  “Besides, I’d much rather you meet Mina first.”

“Sure, let’s Skype while you’re there over break,” Jean relented, returning to his inspection of Mina’s handwriting with a fond smile.  Armin fought the urge to mirror it.  The thought of having two people Armin could confide in felt wonderful, almost surreal--but again, he remembered when he _did_ have two best friends, two very real childhood friends, who had meant the entire world to him.

His throat was tight.  It had taken him twelve years to find two people; how much longer would it take him to find two more?

Jean said his name.

Armin snapped out of his thoughts.  “Yes?”

“How do you recognize us?” Jean asked.  His voice still held on to some of the wonder from before.  “How do you just--find us?”

That was an unfair question, Armin thought.  “Find” was too generous a word for what Armin did--it made it sound as if he had been deliberately searching and succeeded.  Instead, all Armin did was watch strangers from afar and nurse the absurd hope that maybe one of them would look back at him.

“Didn’t you feel it when you saw me?” Armin asked.

Jean shook his head.  “Feel what?”

“Something like--familiarity, just short of recognition.”  Armin looked at his hands, which were now in thoughtful fists on the kitchen counter.  “Like when you watch a film and see an actor that you are certain you’ve seen before, though you can’t remember where exactly.  It takes me a few moments to know specifically who they are, but generally, I can tell for sure if I’ve met them before--or somewhere else.”

Jean’s expression was bewildered, fascinated.  “I’ve never felt that, Armin.”

“You recognized me, though.”

“I didn’t.  I just felt that I may have seen you before, maybe at a party or from a lecture--nothing as strong as what you described.  I sure as hell didn’t think you were from my _dreams_.”

That Jean had not instantly recognized him hurt Armin more than he anticipated.  Logically, Armin knew that Jean had probably brushed off his memories as nightmares, so there was no reason why he should be as willing to recognizing the people in his dreams.  It made sense that Jean would never have assumed that he had known Armin from a past life.  Even so, Armin still felt a touch of disappointment.

Armin had been searching faces for all his life, and somehow, without his knowing, the desire to be found had grown inside him as well.

“Perhaps you’ll be able to meet more people from that life now that you’ve met one” was all Armin could say.

Jean’s expression was thoughtful as he flipped through the pages of Armin’s journal with so much care that Armin felt a bit embarrassed.

“You know, I really hope so.”

***

Armin woke with a start.

He frantically ran his hands over his face and hair, assuring himself that he was whole and unhurt, that he wasn't _bleeding_.  He tried to control the harshness of his breathing, but found that it only hurt his chest.

He had had this dream before.  He had had it before, but it still left him in a cold panic.

He could still feel the ache in his bones from being thrown to the ground, the itch in his throat from screaming.

At the female titan.  At Annie.

Armin stumbled into his kitchen to collect his journal and pour himself a glass of water.  His hand shook and the glass rattled against the metal basin of the sink.  It had been a while--months, maybe years--since he had had a dream as vivid as this, and Armin suspected that the sleeping body on his sofa had everything to do with it.  He hoped that Jean wasn’t having terrible dreams too.

Opening his journal to the dream entries, Armin shakily began to record the date, the people in his dream, the location.  That was how Armin fought the sickening fear: he condensed the horror into numbers and locations and objective facts until it was a flat as a history textbook.

_Date: March 8th.  Jean, Reiner, Female Titan (Annie).  Plains, outside Wall Rose._

The pen fell from Armin’s hand, clattering onto the linoleum floor.  Armin cursed quietly and retrieved it.

_57th expedition of the Survey Corps.  Female titan approaches from right flank, killing Cis and Ness.  Lifts up my hood--does not kill me._

Nothing about the sound of Ness’ bones as he was flung to the ground.  Nothing about the frantic certainty that he was about to die in a place where his body could never be recovered.  Nothing about how Annie’s body had blocked out the sun, the unbearable heat of having her so near, crouched down so that her half-lidded face was close enough to touch.

The lights above the counter flicked on.

Armin dropped the pen again, but this time he knew better than to go after it.  He slid his hands beneath his legs to hide the trembling.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Armin asked, watching Jean scan the room from the doorway.  Even half-asleep, Jean still excelled at understanding the exact situation he had stumbled into.  Armin knew it was useless to try to hide it.

Jean slid into a chair across from Armin.  “What did you dream about?”

Armin passed Jean the journal.  The entry was only half-finished, but Armin could read in Jean’s expression that he was familiar with the memory.  Of course, since Jean had been there too; Jean had saved him, and he had saved Jean.  It was strange to see someone other than Mina put their hands on their journal and completely understand.  Armin relished in it.

“Damn it, I did this,” Jean said in a voice that made Armin turn up his eyes in surprise.  He knew the tone well, but had never expected Jean to speak with such guilty frustration.  “Me being here--it’s making your dreams worse.”

 _It is_ , Armin thought.  It was true, but he was too afraid to scare Jean away.

“Did you dream too?”

Jean pressed his lips together, then turned his eyes back down the the journal at hand.  “Just--of trainee days.  Before it got so bad.  Just of you, with Er--”

“Thank goodness,” Armin cut in, stopping Jean from continuing.  Jean paused, a little startled, then read the weariness in Armin’s face.  Armin knew that Jean probably understood.  There were some names were too difficult to hear so late at night.

They were quiet for a while, except for their breathing.  Armin restlessly made tea, because that was all he really knew how to do at times like this, and sat back at the table to drink it from the plain and ugly mug he had bought in America.  He waited for Jean to head back to the sofa.

“You don’t have to wait up for me,” Armin said as the hour hand inched toward four.  His tea had long gone cold, but it was difficult to return to bed after a dream that made him afraid to close his eyes.

“Seems shitty to go back to sleep,” Jean mumbled, still looking over Armin’s journal with bloodshot eyes.

Armin stood to dump his tea into the sink.  He appreciated the sentiment, but kept imagining Jean collapsing from exhaustion while on the subway later that day.  Armin could tell that Jean had barely slept at all that week--neither had he, he supposed, but jetlag would take care of that in the next day or so--and it didn’t matter to him whether he spent a sleepless night in the kitchen or in his room.  “I’ll go back to bed, so you go to sleep too, Jean.”

Jean looked up at Armin with an expression that told him that he didn’t believe Armin at all, but obeyed.

 ***

A few hours later, Armin slipped out of his room into the kitchen and found Jean asleep with his head on the kitchen table.  He crept as quietly as he could to retrieve fill his coffee carafe with water, glancing over his shoulder every once at a while for any hint of how long Jean had been at the table.  As coffee began to drip into the pot, Armin heard Jean stir.

“Fucker, you said you were going back to sleep,” Jean mumbled.  He added, "Smells good."

Armin glanced at his watch.  “It’s six o’clock.”

“Who wakes up at six?” Jean groaned, running his hands over his face.  “Jesus, what are you?”

Armin chuckled and poured Jean a cup in one of the two mugs he owned.  “Didn’t you say that you were going back to bed too?”

Jean took the mug and gulped it down, looking no less refreshed, and thrust it at Armin for a refill.  Armin noted with surprise that this Jean, unlike the fifteen year old Jean he remembered, was capable of growing stubble overnight.  “Like you really went to bed.  At least I slept.”

“On my dinner table.”

“I knew you’d come back after you thought I was asleep, and I was right.”

“Jean, it’s _six o’clock_.”

“ _Who wakes up at six, Armin?_ ” Jean repeated vehemently, and this time Armin laughed out loud.  And after a few moments, Jean began to laugh as well; before long, they were both doubled over in stitches.  Armin felt all of the tension escape his body and was left utterly exhausted, amazed and grateful that somehow in this enormous city he had found the one other person he hadn't known he had wanted to find.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've ever tried to write fic, so I apologize if it's strange. Thank you very much for reading! Feedback is super welcome.


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